On 17 April, the Mozambican athlete Bruno Saraiva won an international bodybuilding competition in Hong Kong.

After beating five competitors, the athlete won first place in the category of classic bodybuilding (classic physique), the most popular and important category in the event, which seeks to find the athlete who best displays their musculature in various positions.

Bruno also won in the ‘overall’ category for the best athlete across all the sub-categories.

He participated in three categories in the Hong Kong Bodybuilding contest: men’s athletic physique, men’s fitness physique, men’s sports model. The contest is scheduled to be held next on 23 June.

In response to our request sent by Facebook chat about how the competition went, Saraiva highlighted that it was his first time at the contest, as well as the limited time he had for preparation:

I was trained by Castro Cazé in only a few days and then we went to do the registration, and he said Bruno you’re going to do the category that I always wanted you to do: the one best known as Classic Physique and soon in my first appearance I won in my category and I then also won the overall, as it is called for all the first places of your category

Followed by over 24 thousand people on his Instagram account, Bruno, who resides in the capital Maputo, is a figure of reference for bodybuilders in Mozambique.

Bodybuilding is the use of progressive resistance exercise to control and develop one's musculature for aesthetic purposes. An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. In competitive bodybuilding, bodybuilders appear in lineups and perform specified poses (and later individual posing routines) for a panel of judges who rank the competitors based on criteria such as symmetry, muscularity, and conditioning.

Saraiva expressed his happiness with winning the award in Hong Kong in an Instagram post:

Thank you for the victory, Lord. It is with much joy that I have the pleasure of announcing and sharing with you all my victory in the category Classic Physique and having won the overall in the global classic competition in Hong Kong

In another post, though, Bruno recounted the difficulties he went through before going to Hong Kong:

Please my friend read this message with a lot of kindness, because it is the purest reality, I have no shame in saying it and I know that many will overreact: when I was about to come to Hong Kong to compete I went around a lot of places knocking on doors asking for support, I spoke with various friends some of whom I was sure could help, and the answers from some were:

1. Bruno you're not going to make it or you don’t have any chance of winning nor of finishing among the best;
2. Others said that they couldn’t help me because it would be throwing away the money;
3. Others even said Bruno you must be smoking a lot of cannabis.

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